Australian Open 2011 - Day 2 - Nalbandian Defeats Hewitt in Thriller

The Rod Laver Arena night match between David Nalbandian and Lleyton Hewitt, was a whole new experience in itself, completely separate from everything, and the most memorable match I’ve seen live.

To read Day 2 reports of the other matches, click here.

Having purchased night session tickets the night before, I wasn’t quite sure where I’d end up sitting in the stadium. It was a good thing I arrived slightly early instead of wanting to watch as much tennis as possible, because I made a mess out of trying to find my seats walking up and down the staircase several times.

I found out I was in the back row, but the view looked okay from there. Not as bad as I imagined. At least it was facing the long side of the court, so that I could distinguish it from TV view, and also without the umpire chair’s seat in the way. I could see the rallies quite easily from here, it was just hard to see the players’ faces though to be honest, it’s hard to see faces even from much closer. The players looked quite small though, and dropshots looked really weird from here like I have no idea where the ball is going when they’re hit.

Fortunately for me, this view is good for watching the rallies, the accuracy and the use of the court which suits what you would want to look out for when watching Nalbandian.

They built up this match on the big screen by showing highlights from the Nalbandian vs Hewitt showdown from the 2005 Australian Open quarter-final, not that I could actually see the rallies on the screen. Okay, it’s not like they made a big effort to show that. That video is already a part of their Australian Open flashback clips that they show in between matches on the stadium courts. But it was appropriate for tonight anyway.

The players hadn’t come out on court yet, so there was a lot of chanting going on from the Fanatics, who don’t look like a particularly big group. They were doing all these patriotic Australian chants and singing the national anthem. No real mentions of Hewitt yet. Feeling naturally patriotic towards my own country, I remembered feeling quite conflicted at the time, but when it comes to choice in players, there is no contest here. David Nalbandian is my favourite player, while Hewitt doesn’t rank anywhere on the list.

Hewitt won the toss and elected to receive, so it was Nalbandian who served first. He seems to have an annoying knack of starting off slowly with sloppy service games and this match was no different. Except that he managed to pull himself out of it and hold somehow.

As the rest of the first set began to unfold, Nalbandian was still making too many unforced errors to threaten Hewitt, in particular off the forehand. Pretty much, the ups and downs of the match were often highlighted by how well he was hitting his forehand. Not because his forehand was the dominating shot, but he needed to stay consistent on both sides, to be able to get the better of all those protracted rallies.

This match was an incredibly tense and dramatic affair all the way throughout, mostly because of these long rallies that neither player appeared to be able to dominate. Service games were often hard-fought, and points weren’t easily won.

Hewitt played good tennis in the first set, with high quality counterpunching. Whenever he moved from side-to-side, whether on the backhand side or forehand side, he’d often manage to hit a penetrating crosscourt shot. Nalbandian bases his game around controlling rallies and getting the upper hand, but he was really struggling to find that here with Hewitt going toe-to-toe with him. I thought, he looked to be in trouble, if rallies were to continue in the same pattern as the first set. It certainly wasn’t only the errors that were doing Nalbandian harm. He couldn’t find a reliable way of regularly winning points aside from the occasional change of pace or sneak into the net, but that wasn’t something he could do often enough.

Hewitt had chances to go up an early break in the second set and continue on the roll he was on, but squandered it with some sloppy errors. There were many break points and opportunities from both players in this match. Some were saved spectacularly, while some were squandered. That particular one was squandered.

Hewitt was playing with impressive consistency and depth at that stage, and he continued to appear to be the better player until Nalbandian out of nowhere struck a couple of unreturnable shots to go up a break, although aided by a couple of Hewitt errors before that. Nalbandian then continued on the momentum built by those two winners, bossing Hewitt around the court more than he did before. But it was no easy task. From then onwards, his backhand down-the-line seemed to fire much better too, more accurately and closer to the lines. That shot won him so many points.

The rallies were still competitive in the second set though. They were competitive in all the sets, and the more important the point was, the more epic it felt. What made the match most memorable were the constant momentum swings, the long games and of course the occasion of playing a night match with home support for Hewitt. Though from the second set onwards, was also the introduction of the two drunk guys in the crowd, constantly talking and yelling silly comments the entire match. Unfortunately they were sitting relatively close to me.

Nalbandian led a break in the third set but then threw it away with horrible errors. Unfortunately it wasn’t a brief concentration lapse, but a rather long passage of poor play which consisted of many forehand errors, often into the net. That break of serve he lost, was with some very sloppy play, that led me to believe that he went on mental walkabout unable to deal with his own level going down, and instead just slapping at the ball. Because that’s what those forehand errors looked like. A slap into the net.

But after a couple of bad games, at least he started making some more respectable errors and grinding away into the rallies. The match started to resemble more of the first set again. Hewitt was playing some good tennis I had to admit. The more stable of the two.

There were so many key points in this match, that my notes don’t seem to cover them and I can’t remember them all. Hewitt had picked up his consistency, while Nalbandian continued to churn out too many errors. Hewitt was up 3-1, and 0-40 on Nalbandian’s serve to go up a double break. I can’t remember how exactly those break points were saved, but I’m 100% sure that Nalbandian played those points much better than the ones he played to go down 0-40.

From then onwards, it seemed being down on the scoreboard really helped Nalbandian play better. He was still making errors every now and then, but his attitude was better, and he was more relaxed also enabling him to hit more winners. But the fact that he won that set without playing that cleanly does suggest that Hewitt’s level dropped considerably as well.

Despite the quality declining in some stages, the drama never really disappeared probably because it didn’t seem like either were secure on their serve. Though Hewitt won many more easy points on his serve than I thought he would. Not necessarily with outright winners, but with a two-shot combo. His serves out wide would often open up the court for him to hit a winner.

Nalbandian had the chance to serve out the set at 5-3 in the fourth set but failed. Once he was back to 5-5, he played a much better service game now that there was no pressure. He continued to improve on his good tie-break record from the last year or so, quite convincingly overcoming Hewitt 7 points to 1.

But I hoped that all matches would not go according to previous records, now that they had entered a fifth set and Hewitt is quite good at those. The early signs didn’t look good for him though. He was playing horribly, the worst tennis he had shown in the match making all kinds of simple unforced errors now. I thought he appeared to be quite tired, but a game or two before Nalbandian needed to serve out the match, Hewitt’s game improved significantly perhaps finding a sudden rush of adrenaline. Just like the fourth set, Nalbandian failed to serve it out, and now they were fully locked into a battle.

As Hewitt started to go down on the scoreboard, the level of noise from the crowd increased dramatically, with people sensing that he might need some help to edge out the win. There’s a certain level where it’s just background noise, then there’s another level of noise where it makes you shiver a little bit. The latter was what the second half of the fifth set was like. Personally I thought it would have started much earlier, but it was mainly only some supporters doing the loud cheering. Of course, I mean what it was like from my section, the back row. I was stuck with the two drunk guys yelling instead. By now, one of the drunk guys had decided to try to operate the Channel 7 camera which no one was using. In some horrible timing, during the late stages of the fifth set while all the craziness was happening, some other people in the crowd decided to start swearing at the drunk guys. I just really hoped that it wouldn’t distract the players, because it was during the rallies. I guess at least they were far away from the action.

Hewitt had match points at 15-40, and the first one I thought he had converted for a brief while before gasping that Nalbandian had hit a crazy half-volley winner, I think it was. Yeah, a half-volley that required very good reflexes and touch. The second one was a long, tough rally, ending up with an excellent volley at the net. He played many of the break points really well today (when saving them), often at a different level to the other points.

I don’t really know exactly when Nalbandian started cramping, but he started keeping his legs moving in between points around about here, which I guess was when it got worse. It obviously helped him though, because he hit many winners on his following service game after saving those break points then on the return game afterwards. I am not sure about the game where he was serving for the match because I was too busy hoping for the right result (for me).

Basically it was a great match, and I gave it the standing ovation it deserved. The final scoreline was 3-6 6-4 3-6 7-6(1) 9-7.

(It is likely there are minor inaccuracies with the report, as there were too many important points for me to keep track of)